Postsingular, Rudy Rucker [e book reading free txt] 📗

orphidnet. Azaroth says he wants to help bring Ond and Chu back from the Hibrane. Ond loves me, you know.”

“Oh everyone loves Jil,” said Thuy sarcastically. “And I know all about Azaroth. He’s my Hibrane friend, too.”

“Mainly he steals cuttlefish from the wholesalers,” said Jil, slowing down again. “I don’t fully trust him.”

“Azaroth told me that he asked you about Chu’s Knot, Jil, and you wouldn’t help. You went to the Hibrane, didn’t you? You touched the Knot.”

“I did. But I don’t remember much. I was really upset. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was thinking—what’s the opposite? Crooked? Bent? Ripped?” Jil sniffled and rubbed her nose. “It sucks that I’m using again. I’m throwing my life away. Last week this dealer offered me such a good price that I caved. I needed some relief. And now I don’t know if I have another recovery in me. It was so frikkin’ hard for me to quit the first time, Thuy. You’ve got no idea. But Craigor doesn’t really love me, and I sure as hell don’t love him. And if I can’t have Jayjay—I’m all alone.”

“You can get better again, Jil. Think about your children. Go back to your support group. Get help.”

Jil sighed and shook her head. “I’m ashamed of being a relapser. And you know what? Maybe I’m not ready to be sober again. Life is too raw. It drives me crazy to have Jayjay here all the time: this delicious snack I can’t eat. And, yes, little Thuy, I feel like shit about my kids. I wish I was dead. I want another hit of sudocoke.” Jil fumbled in her pocket.

“Oh, Jil, don’t. Sleep it off, and when you’re yourself again, call up your old sponsor. She’ll help you.”

“Oh, what do you know? I’m on a run, Thuy; I’m not gonna be sleeping at all.” Jil set the stash box on the table with a click. The orphidnet showed a sinister glitter in the sudocoke.

“I’m going outside,” said Thuy. “You got a raincoat I can use?”

“Over there,” said Jil with an abrupt jerk of her hand toward a rack with several of those cuttlefish-stenciled ponchos. She took another quick hit of sudocoke, and the bitter energy surged into her. “A fresh costume for Hipster Goody Girl,” said Jil as Thuy slipped on a poncho. She raised her voice to a mocking soprano lisp. “Ooo, does this make my ego look too big?”

It was definitely time to step outside. The rain had subsided to a drifting mist. A dozen iridescent piezoplastic crows were wandering about the deck, shaking out their wings and clacking their beaks. Mr. Peanut was standing on his tripod of legs in the not-so-deep water, scanning the bay and brandishing his cane like a fencer’s foil. Jayjay and Craigor were excitedly fiddling with piezoplastic bands stretched among the joints and pistons of a small steel backhoe, which had a Happy Shoon perched in its driver’s seat, his fingers grown into spindly tendrils which twined around the machinery to touch each of the stretchy bands. The bands were taking the place of the beat old machine’s unfueled gasoline engine.

“Jil is—” began Thuy.

“We know,” said Jayjay. “It’s been like this all week. I feel bad about it. Like it’s partly my fault. But I don’t know what to do.”

“What about you, Craigor?” said Thuy. “Don’t you care?”

Craigor looked Thuy over again. “It’s gonna be me in my coffin when I die, little girl. This is my only run. No way I can paddle back upstream, back to what Jil and I had before.”

“You could try,” urged Thuy. “Love her, Craigor. Save her. And what about your children?”

“My parents stayed together for the sake of the kids,” said Craigor, tall, stiff, unhappy. “It was hell for all of us. Why am I even telling you this? Words suck. You are what you do. If Jil wants to save herself, that’s her call.” Seeing something in the bay, Craigor whooped with a warrior’s fierce exultation. “Yeah, baby! Here he comes!”

The puffed-up golem was in view to the stern, approaching fast, his arms and legs beating a fierce rhythm. The pelican and the pterodactyl were circling overhead, and in the orphidnet Thuy could see the crocodile coming up on the Merz Boat from below.

Craigor’s plastic crows took wing and mobbed the pair of airborne shoons, doing their best to distract them without being snapped up by the great beaks. Moments later three of the crows were gone. They were overmatched.

Moving with awkward agility, Mr. Peanut lurched into position and intercepted the golem, who didn’t seem to recognize the peanut as a threat. Easy as pie, Mr. Peanut shish-kebabbed the golem with his cane. The golem struggled and burbled; Mr. Peanut bit off his head, then his chest, then his legs. Fueled by the piezoplastic, the top-hatted goober doubled his body size. Triumphantly he slashed his cane at the waves.

Before Thuy, Jayjay, and Craigor could cheer Mr. Peanut’s success, the Merz Boat shuddered amidships. The crocodile shoon had reared out of the water to tear loose a chunk of the low gunnel. Icy water sloshed across the deck as the thick plastic reptile heaved himself aboard. Twanging and shuddering, the backhoe stretched its jaws toward the croc. The croc snapped at the metal shovel, managing to sever one of its power belts.

For now the green pelican simply hovered, watching the events unfold. But the pterodactyl dove at Thuy as if meaning to carry her off. She flattened herself on the deck; the pterodactyl missed her. The backhoe spun fruitlessly in a tight circle, its Happy Shoon driver frantically adjusting the belts in an effort to regain control. The red pterodactyl did a loop-the-loop and dove again, keeping Thuy in place.

And now the crocodile came slithering across the deck toward her, his toothy jaws ajar. Thuy began screaming for help, but not quite from the bottom of her heart. At some level, she felt detached—as if she were perusing a lifebox metanovel. Damsel in distress! Who’ll save me?

Craigor was over by the long cabin, poised to defend his family. But Jayjay—Jayjay was there for Thuy. He sprang forward with a machete in his grip and thrust it toward the red pterodactyl, forcing the monster to cease its diving and hover on high. Thuy sprang to her feet and backed away from the croc—only to find herself cornered against the wall of the boat’s workshop.

The crocodile flexed his haunches and widened his jaws, preparing to pounce. All veils of playfulness dropped. Thuy was facing empty, eternal death. She screamed with everything she had. Jayjay charged past the backhoe and slashed into the croc’s back. The hissing shoon turned to snap at him, giving the backhoe an opening to clamp onto the croc’s tail. And now Thuy’s hero waded in and hacked the monster to bits. A flock of shoons converged on the gobbets of piezoplastic, gobbling them up.

“Look out!” shouted Craigor. Thirteen-year-old Momotaro was standing in the door of the long cabin beside his slightly younger sister, Bixie, with Jil frozen-faced behind them, her brain fogged with glowing dots. Craigor and Momotaro were pointing at the hovering red pterodactyl, who was oddly bending his body in half.

Thuy and Jayjay found shelter against the backhoe, in case the shoon dived, but this time he pulled a new stunt: he shat a flaming pellet of piezoplastic onto the deck; the lump sputtered and sizzled like napalm. The boat itself might have caught fire if it hadn’t been for the puddled water from the broken gunnel. Snapping out of her trance, Jil directed her shoons to suck up water and to spit it onto the flames.

The pterodactyl feathered his wings and hunched his body again as if to drop a flame-egg upon the exposed roof of the long cabin. Craigor roared defiance, leaping onto the cabin’s roof and tossing three of his crow shoons into the air. And now finally the green pelican did something. Quick as a sewing machine’s needle, his beak dispatched the crows: one-two-three.

Thuy was dizzied by all the sensations, especially as she was trying to mold them into metanovel material in realtime. As part of the work she’d switched on a music track: operatic rock and roll. The pterodactyl and the pelican were visual echoes of the menacing bird-headed subbie she’d seen in the non-space between Topping’s office and the ExaExa labs.

The dusky red pterodactyl squawked his approval for the crow-pecking, but then, when he was least expecting it, the green pelican darted at him and—yes!—ripped off one of his wings. The pterodactyl plummeted downward, bounced off the side of the Merz Boat, and ended up screeching and floundering in the Bay waters. Mr. Peanut strode over and dispatched him with cruel stabs of his cane.

There was a moment of calm. The Merz Boat pushed up a fresh gunnel-lip to repair the gap the crocodile had made. The sloshing bay waters drained out through the scuppers. The pelican glided to a silent landing on the deck, preened himself, and fixed the humans with a glittering eye.

“Hi Jayjay,” he said in a familiar voice. “Sonic sent me. Lay down that machete, you’re making me nervous.”

Jayjay thought for a minute, consulting his simulation beezies, and then he laid the machete on the deck behind him and hunkered beside the pelican. “Talk to me,” he said.

“Ready for a private message stream?” said the pelican.

“Let Thuy and Craigor hear, too,” said Jayjay.

“And us,” said Momotaro.

“Not you kids,” said Jil. “You need to get back in bed. It’s too cold out here.” She shuddered. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Aw, Mom.”

“Come on.” Jil and the kids disappeared into the cabin.

“Here we go,” said the pelican to Thuy, Jayjay, and Craigor, the three of them squatting around him. Overhead the clouds were breaking up and the moon was shining through, big and bright, just past full.

The data flowed in, a mental movie in three scenes. As soon as Thuy realized what she was seeing, she began forwarding it to Chief Bim Brown.

***

The first scene shows Sonic on the day he was abducted, October 21, two weeks before the election. Sonic is closed in by the quantum-mirrored walls of the ExaExa labs, sitting at a long white table drinking a big mug of coffee, still in his red T-shirt with his pleated leather coat on the table beside him.

One wall is covered with the teleport grill, the opposite wall holds a door, and the side walls are mounted with four view screens simulating natural phenomena: cracking mud, wind-tossed branches, a beach fire, and a waterfall.

Set into a niche like an altar beneath the bonfire screen is a smooth-cornered white plastic box bearing the ExaExa beetle logo and a single red button on its side. The box has intricate latches on its lid.

Jeff Luty is talking to Sonic. He’s still gangly, but he’s put on some weight, living alone in his lab. His wavy, unwashed hair is drawn into a ponytail. He wears a bracelet of colored oval stones around his wrist. The stones are incised to look like beetles. His skin is unhealthy, almost gray. He has plastic ants on his chin and cheeks, but his ropy chapped lips show. He licks his upper lip, then compulsively applies some waxy lip balm from a tube.

“What’s with the ants, Jeff?” says Sonic.

“A visual pun,” says Luty, his plain face forming a faint smile. “I’m in personal crunch mode to find a nant design that orphids and code-hackers can’t trash. I’m farming a few thousand evolutionary algorithms. The formic minibots on my face are ant-shaped shoons loaded with sample nant nanocodes. They’re a fake beard, too.”

“Like you’d go outside wearing plastic